Beyond my previous post, this needs no comment.
Shares of the two publicly traded gun makers rallied on Monday, a day after President Barack Obama gave a prime-time address calling for a modest reduction in the availability of firearms. Both Smith & Wesson SWHC, +7.64% and Sturm Ruger & Co. RGR, +5.78% rose over 7% on Monday.
Smith & Wesson has climbed 116% this year and Sturm Ruger has jumped 69%.
Gun stocks spike after Obama’s speech (graphic – MarketWatch)
The rains in Madras (Chennai) have been the heaviest in 100 years. Which only proves that the climate is only doing what it has done before. Global warming and climate change have nothing whatever to do with the current situation. The flooding is unprecedented however. But it is the real estate feeding frenzy which has seen the old water bodies disappear as they were drained to satisfy the lust of the building developers. In addition, low lying areas have been paved over to give way to high rise monstrosities to satisfy the growth of the city, but the drainage provided has been at the minimum required by inadequate planning standards. Storm drains have not been given much thought. That water now collects in these low lying areas since there are inadequate run-off possibilities, makes the current flooding almost inevitable. Developers have gotten away with it because such heavy rains don’t come that often. Needless to say that the new IT corridor with its glistening, futuristic offices, is among the worst affected.
There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and many innocent scapegoats will be found as the post-mortem gets under way once the waters recede, and the clean-up begins. I heard this morning that food prices are going through the roof (not unexpected) but at least water supply sources have not been reported to have been contaminated. Water snakes are having a field day but they are, at least, not venomous. Transport is paralysed though the airport opened again today. One unexpected problem is that bodies from deaths quite unrelated to the flooding are accumulating in homes and make-shift “cool houses”, for want of the ability to cremate them. (Normally cremation occurs within 24 – 48 hours of death). The highest risk for disease will probably come just after the waters recede and people become mobile again.
One does not expect, even at the best of times, that political party workers have any ethical standards at all (let alone any high standards). But the reports this morning that AIADMK party workers have been holding up relief packets just so that can first stick on pictures of the Chief Minister (Jayalalitha), must be a new low even for them.
Livemint: All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (AIADMK), the ruling party of Tamil Nadu led by J Jayalalithaa, promised to take strict action against party workers who blocked volunteers or forced them to paste her pictures on relief materials meant for Chennai flood victims. ….
The AIADMK party workers’ decision to stick Jayalalithaa’s pictures on relief material and use the rescue efforts for publicity faced severe criticism from Chennai residents and others on social media.
While the rains have subsided, the city and other parts of Tamil Nadu are yet to recover from the flooding caused by the heaviest rains in a century that claimed over 300 lives and forced the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) to undertake its most massive flood relief operation ever.
The waters are beginning to recede though further heavy rain is again forecast. Hopefully the worst is over and the relief has begun to flow in earnest. But the clean up will take some time.
There is behaviour and there is behaviour, but party political workers are a species unto themselves.
George Washington University’s Program on Extremism has just published a report “ISIS in America – from retweets to Raqqa”.
ISIS in America George Washington University
Some extracts from the Executive Summary:
- WHILE NOT AS LARGE as in many other Western countries, ISIS-related mobilization in the United States has been unprecedented. As of the fall of 2015, U.S. authorities speak of some 250 Americans who have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria/Iraq to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and 900 active investigations against ISIS sympathizers in all 50 states.
- …….
- Social media plays a crucial role in the radicalization and, at times, mobilization of U.S.-based ISIS sympathizers. The Program on Extremism has identified some 300 American and/or U.S.-based ISIS sympathizers active on social media, spreading propaganda, and interacting with like-minded individuals. Some members of this online echo chamber eventually make the leap from keyboard warriors to actual militancy.
- American ISIS sympathizers are particularly active on Twitter, where they spasmodically create accounts that often get suspended in a never-ending cat-and-mouse game. Some accounts (the “nodes”) are the generators of primary content, some (the “amplifiers”) just retweet material, others (the “shout-outs”) promote newly created accounts of suspended users.
- ISIS-related radicalization is by no means limited to social media. While instances of purely web-driven, individual radicalization are numerous, in several cases U.S.-based individuals initially cultivated and later strengthened their interest in ISIS’s narrative through face-to-face relationships. In most cases online and offline dynamics complement one another.
- The spectrum of U.S.-based sympathizers’ actual involvement with ISIS varies significantly, ranging from those who are merely inspired by its message to those few who reached mid-level leadership positions within the group.
Membership of ISIS members within the US legal system is spread across the US but New York, Minnesota, California and Texas seem to be preferred states.
ISIS members in US legal system
All religions operate in the space of Ignorance. So when members of one religion criticise a follower of another, it is essentially “my ignorance” claiming to be better than “your ignorance”. However, I don’t think it is just blind prejudice or “Islamophobia” to say that the teachings of Islam are inherently more suited to be perverted and to be used to glorify and inspire gratuitous violence against “non-believers”, than the teachings of any other, current, major religion.
There is a renewed rhetoric in favour of gun controls after the California rampage, just as there is after every mass killing, but which never leads to any action. I am always amazed that Barack Obama, who is so fond of executive actions in other areas where he is opposed by Congress, has been so ineffective in implementing any actions to reduce the access to what are essentially military weapons. But this rhetoric may be misplaced if the killings were by what now looks to have been a husband-wife death squad, operating fairly autonomously(?), but for ISIS, and possibly led by the wife, who was indoctrinated mainly in Saudi Arabia and Multan. A lot of ifs and buts in that sentence, of course.
It has been the contention of the gun lobby that the citizenry having guns is a deterrent to such massacres and they have pointed to statistics showing that more of these mass killings take place in gun-free zones. The argument seems disingenuous in that not having availability to guns would probably avoid many of these incidents from taking place. There is some truth, I think, in the argument that once an incident has started, the magnitude of the incident can be limited by some of the intended victims being armed and capable of resisting.
Gun controls then ought to reduce the number of incidents but once an incident is underway, then the scope of the incident can be limited by the intended victims having the possibility to resist.
But if this incident turns out to be a terrorist action by a kill-squad, then it would not have been avoided by having gun controls in place. And if some of the victims had been armed maybe the death toll would not have been as high as it was. If this death-squad was just one of many such and the next incident could come at any time, 2 things follow:
I think the US now faces this dilemma. Introducing gun controls should reduce the number of the conventional, single perpetrator, mass-killing events which have become almost a “usual” and – on average – daily occurrence. However, gun controls cannot prevent terrorist squads from arming themselves and gun-free zones will be more attractive for a terrorist attack. And if an incident cannot be prevented, then it is safer for people to be armed.
Without any terrorist threat I think the value of restrictions on access to, at least, automatic weapons seems obvious and there would be no serious argument against gun controls. However, if a threat of terrorist death-squads suddenly popping up for a rampage is real, then it would be quite the wrong time to prevent potential victims from being armed.
It is a Bermuda triangle for policy; between a rock, a hard place and the devil.
christmas dinner (guardian)
It is that time of the year. There are luscious smells of baking and roasting and frying that assail my poor brain. Almost everything that makes my mouth water is bad for me. I have just about recovered from the frustrations of abstinence from Diwali sweets and Christmas is now already upon us. I have just been soaking the dried fruits in my second best brandy and they can absorb no more. Dark, bitter chocolate and marzipan and glazed cherries are coming out of their hiding places in the larder (and they are hidden to keep me from them). Now I feel schizophrenic. My unconscious brain is delighting in all the good things to come but my conscious, rational brain is just making a list of eating pleasures that will be heavily curtailed or may not even be.
image londonbeep.com
And that got me to wondering why natural selection and evolution could be so horribly, ineffective. How come, I do not crave what is healthy and good for me? If evolution worked properly and worked towards my survival, then surely my brain would crave salads and raw vegetables and fruits and maybe some nuts, but not honey-glazed ham and choux pastry dipped in dark chocolate and filled with cream. Or brandy butter and Christmas cake saturated with booze. Why do I find roast potatoes so much more enticing than plain boiled potatoes (except of course if they were new potatoes and covered in herb butter and melted cheddar)?
My tentative theory is that in the last 2000 years humans have become experts at creating their own, favourable environmental bubbles in which they live. Our bubbles include the production of our food. We live in the Arctic or at the equator and maintain a tropical climate around ourselves throughout the year. Refined sugar and processed meat and hot house vegetables are things that natural selection was not intended to cope with. I read that we crave certain foods to balance the serotonin that our brains desire to maintain a “proper” balance – whatever that might be. Carbohydrates provide serotonin which dispels stress and anxiety. Fats and sugar together produce calm and even euphoria. Before we controlled the production and processing of our foods we only had access to natural sugars through fruits and some vegetables. Meats provided fats. Quantities imbibed were necessarily limited, for sources were not as readily available until after agriculture and animal domestication were established (say from 20,000 to 10,000 years ago for the transition). And there has been another massive step change in the availability of these foods and in their affordability in the last 100 years.
The rate of change with which humans have established the environmental bubbles we create, and in the foods available to us, has been much too fast for natural selection to cope with. Moreover, even though what is bad for us may eventually kill us, medical advances mean that even the “unfit” lovers of bad foods live long enough to reproduce and pass on their genes. Natural selection no longer has a role to play. It has been bypassed and has become irrelevant. Medical care now negates all the deselection of “unfit” individuals that natural selection once eliminated.
I see evolution actually as the result of the individuals who get deselected rather than a proactive selection of those individuals who are just good enough to survive. (It has never been about the survival of the fittest – but only of the selection – by default – of those just fit enough to survive). Hence my conclusion that my cravings for unhealthy foods are the fault of an ineffective and obsolete natural selection.
So as I struggle with (and sometimes give in to) temptations for the next month, I will console myself by blaming the imperfect, lethargic and ineffective natural selection which has failed me.
It is just being reported that Tashfeen Malik, the female half of the San Bernardino, death squad had sworn allegiance to ISIS (Da’esh), but that it was not clear if the couple were self-radicalised and acting by themselves or were acting on the orders of someone else.
That may be a question that will never get answered. But it raises the spectre of the pair having been “placed” there with some general instructions to raise mayhem either on being triggered or, even at their own initiative. We have become used to the use of female suicide bombers, some of them also mothers. We have seen young children being desensitised to deadly violence by playing assassin games but with real live prisoners. The use of young children as human shields or – as perhaps in California – as camouflage is not something that would cause any moral distress to Da’esh. It could even be that the pair were advised to have a young child just for that purpose.
The use of a husband-wife team, put in place as a “sleeping” killer squad, would represent a new tactic. Single, young men are too obvious and attract attention. A “family man” and a “young mother” carry a protective shroud of innocence. And if they are pushing a stroller or carrying a baby in a child-seat in a car, they would be far down the list of suspicious looking people. That the mother in this case had few qualms of abandoning her 6-month old baby may be shocking, but I am no longer surprised at any behaviour of jihadists who have worked themselves up into a religious fervour.
For the US, I think it now raises the possibility that there may be many such husband-wife kill teams in place all over the country. They may not even have travelled to Saudi Arabia (though a visit to Saudi and a return with a fiancee is likely to raise automatic red flags), as the NYT reports:
NYT: …. The F.B.I. refocused its efforts on these individuals earlier this year in response to a shift in tactics by the Islamic State, law enforcement officials said. Instead of trying to persuade Americans to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State, the group began calling on its sympathizers and followers in the United States to commit acts of violence at home.
“We’ve especially focused on the portfolio of people we’re investigating for the potential of being homegrown violent extremists,” the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said last month at a news conference. “That is, people consuming the propaganda. So those investigations are designed to figure out where are they on the spectrum from consuming to acting.” …….
…… In the days leading up to the shooting, the couple in San Bernardino took several steps to delete their electronic information, in an apparent effort to cover their tracks, officials said. Those efforts have led authorities to believe that the shooting was premeditated.
Islamic terrorists have used the oath of allegiance, called a bayat, to declare their loyalty to specific groups and leaders. To become a member of Al Qaeda, for instance, terrorists historically swore their devotion to Osama bin Laden.
Ms. Malik, 27, was born in Pakistan and traveled on a Pakistani passport, but had recently lived in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Farook, 28, was a United States citizen, born in Illinois, whose parents were from Pakistan. …..
Just visiting a jihadist site is now likely to raise a flag and be tagged. But a sliver lining here is that ISIS is rapidly running out of tactics to use. Fourteen innocent people were massacred here but I see little benefit actually accruing to ISIS.
Sweden has a well developed welfare state and longevity is high. But, I sometimes feel, those of the elderly who do not have private means, can expect to be hidden away from the general view and encouraged to fade away.
Age discrimination is endemic. The country has a youth fixation and this leads to a deep-seated and widespread discrimination against the elderly. Generally, once a person is labelled a “pensioner” at 65, the journey to being a non-person begins. Only those with private means have some chance of escaping the solitude and invisibility forced upon them. The elderly are grossly under-represented in parliament. The population over 65 is about 26% but the number of members of parliament over 65 is just 2.6%. Instead of utilising the wealth of experience and knowledge available, parliament has more than its fair share of incompetent youngsters. (This is in spite of the critical faculties of the brain not being fully developed till about the age of 25). It is more expensive for employers to hire seniors even under this red/green government, for who “self-employment” is a dirty word. The prejudices against the elderly show up even in the health and welfare services. The services for the elderly have become dominated by the cost to fulfil the law and are not really concerned with any other measure of quality. Elderly people are often subject to a form of unconscious triage and receive inferior health care. The laws are ostensibly very friendly to the elderly but are administered often by very indifferent (if not unfriendly) people. It is generally assumed that the law – which should be a minimum requirement- is actually a sufficient assurance of quality. The “friendliness” of the laws and the assumed quality they “assure” is used to assuage the conscience of society as the elderly are hidden away in homes and encouraged to fade away with as little fuss as possible.
Every so often a case gets attention which demonstrates the impersonal and “heartless” nature of the welfare services for the old who do not have private means.
Expressen: Siv and Nils Sundén, 72 and 86, have lived together for over 40 years. But now Stockholm City is forcing them to stay in different homes for the elderly – even though it is against the law. “We do not have many years left so it is important to be together”, says Nils Sundén.
A couple who have long lived together have the right to continue living together, even if they have different care needs. This law, of the right to cohabitation, has been in force since November 1, 2012. However few make use of it. …..
“We’ve been married for over thirty years. When we first moved from our villa, we came to a retirement home in Blackeberg. I lived in a group home and Siv got an apartment in the same house”, says Nils Sundén.
But the nursing home had shortcomings and the married couple were forced to move to two different homes for the elderly in early 2013. In May, the couple asked about getting to stay together, but this was rejected by the Assistance Unit within the City of Stockholm, which decided on the matter. Siv and Nils Sundén were denied the opportunity to live together and the official wrote,
“Joint living is not deemed to be appropriate in the nursing and care homes with dementia orientation unless both spouses have need of such accommodation.” …..Dick Lindberg is an investigator at the National Social Services Board. He has been commissioned by the government to guide municipalities on how to apply the new law on cohabitation. He has followed the work of the law and written inquiries on the issue since 2012. He was very surprised that Nils and Siv Sundén had been refused the chance to stay together. “It sounds a bit strange. The whole point (of the law) is that it applies to spouses with different care needs. Even if one of the pair is completely healthy they should be able to stay together anyway. Moreover, there is no exception for people with dementia”, said Dick Lindberg.
The couple were first denied the chance to stay together because he lived in a dementia home. Which he does not. Then they were denied on the grounds of the health needs of one of them, which is not valid as a reason for denying that the couple live together. …..
Turkey (and Erdogan and his family) are living up to my perceptions of supreme Byzantine duplicity. They are involved in a particularly dirty game of complex intrigue and unprincipled double dealing in Syria.
The EU is going to pay Turkey some €3 billion to control the flow of refugees to Europe and for housing refugees in Turkey. The better the control that can be shown the greater the payment by the EU. Now Turkey has a mechanism in place to earn money from people trafficking. There is real financial benefit to show more coming in to Turkey across the border with Syria and to show that less of them are leaving for Europe. Moreover Turkish citizens now have visa-free travel to Europe. The fault lines in Europe are easy to exploit and Turkey is running rings around the EU.
Henry Barkey in Carnegie Europe: That Europe is selling out to Turkey is perfectly understandable in this light. But many in Europe will perceive as excessive the deal reached by Brussels and Ankara on November 29: money, visa-free travel arrangements for Turkish citizens, and the opening of a chapter of Turkey’s EU accession process in exchange for better management of the refugees and steps to prevent them from reaching Europe.
The EU is coming out as naive and gullible and complicit in Turkey’s people trafficking games.
But far more damaging are the Russian allegations of the involvement of Turkey, and more specifically of the President’s son, Bilal Erdogan, in the trading of ISIS oil.
BBC: Russia’s defence ministry has accused the family of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of being directly involved in the trade of petroleum with the Islamic State group.
Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov said Turkey was the biggest buyer of “stolen” oil from Syria and Iraq.
The Russians are getting very detailed about the involvement of Bilal Erdogan in profiteering from ISIS oil and even about Erdogan’s daughter providing aid and comfort to wounded ISIS fighters
MintPressNews: …….. Others reaffirmed Lavrov’s stance, such as retired French General Dominique Trinquand, who said that “Turkey is either not fighting ISIL at all or very little, and does not interfere with different types of smuggling that takes place on its border, be it oil, phosphate, cotton or people,” he said.
……. And while we patiently dig to find who the on and offshore “commodity trading” middleman are, who cart away ISIS oil to European and other international markets in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars, one name keeps popping up as the primary culprit of regional demand for the Islamic State’s “terrorist oil” – that of Turkish president Recep Erdogan’s son: Bilal Erdogan.
Byzantine Empire in 650 AD Wikipedia
More and more details are coming to light revealing that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, variously known as ISIS, IS or Daesh, is being fed and kept alive by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish President and by his Turkish intelligence service, including MIT, the Turkish CIA. Turkey, as a result of Erdoğan’s pursuit of what some call a Neo-Ottoman Empire fantasies that stretch all the way to China, Syria and Iraq, threatens not only to destroy Turkey but much of the Middle East if he continues on his present path.
In October 2014 US Vice President Joe Biden told a Harvard gathering that Erdoğan’s regime was backing ISIS with “hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons…” Biden later apologized clearly for tactical reasons to get Erdoğan’s permission to use Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base for airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, but the dimensions of Erdoğan’s backing for ISIS since revealed is far, far more than Biden hinted. …..
The prime source of money feeding ISIS these days is sale of Iraqi oil from the Mosul region oilfields where they maintain a stronghold. The son of Erdoğan it seems is the man who makes the export sales of ISIS-controlled oil possible.
Bilal Erdoğan owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells. Bilal Erdoğan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers. ….
… In addition to son Bilal’s illegal and lucrative oil trading for ISIS, Sümeyye Erdoğan, the daughter of the Turkish President apparently runs a secret hospital camp inside Turkey just over the Syrian border where Turkish army trucks daily being in scores of wounded ISIS Jihadists to be patched up and sent back to wage the bloody Jihad in Syria, according to the testimony of a nurse who was recruited to work there until it was discovered she was a member of the Alawite branch of Islam, the same as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who Erdoğan seems hell-bent on toppling. ……..
I note that though Turkey is part of the US coalition, they have only attacked Kurdish fighters in their strikes in Syria. And now they have also shot down a Russian fighter which was threatening their oil from Da’esh. I am left with the perception that Turkey’s priority is overwhelmingly the suppression of the Kurds. Anything is acceptable to prevent a Kurdistan getting off the ground (let alone a greater Kurdistan). The second priority is to stir the conflict to make it as lucrative as possible for Turkey and its ruling families. Getting rid of Assad is also on their list, but not at the price of advancing the Kurds. If Da’esh (ISIS) is to take over from Assad and curb the Kurds, then that is perfectly acceptable. To fight Da’esh is not even explicitly on their list as an objective.
Why Barack Obama and John Kerry put up with the Turkish duplicity is not clear to me. That Turkey is a member of a belligerent and expansionist NATO (What has Turkey to do with the North Atlantic? and now Macedonia?), may provide some explanation. But recalling the way in which Biden changed his tune suggests that US “principles” are fairly flexible here. Unless Turkey’s protection of the flow of funds to Da’esh is stopped, no strategy to eliminate them can succeed. (Of course to stop the “idea” of Da’esh, requires that Saudi Arabia stop playing games). Now with Raqqa under attack it seems Turkey is also complicit in allowing Da’esh members to escape to Libya to set up an alternative “safe zone”. Such a Turkey as a member of the EU and as its first majority Muslim country is almost frightening.
If the Russian supported advances of the Syrian government continue at the present rate, the US-led coalition and the rebels they support may not have too much to say when a Syria, sans ISIS, is carved up. The Russians, regime Syrians, the Kurds and Iran will settle it among themselves. Now this may just be the Russian / Syrian propaganda line, but I suspect that there is some truth in it. Yesterday it was announced that the rebels (mainly al Nusra) would be evacuated from Homs under UN supervision as the Syrian government forces would cease their siege and take over.
I note that the US is now talking about US boots on the ground to support the “good” rebels and this is, I think, a response to a fear of being left out and left behind. Certainly the difference in effectiveness of one month two months of Russian air strikes – with a strategy – compared to 14 months of US and coalition air strikes, but without a strategy, seems quite remarkable.
Sky:
Bashar al Assad has said US-led coalition bombing in Syria helped Islamic State to expand and recruit fighters.
….. But he praised military action by his ally Russia, which has been accused of targeting moderate rebels as well as jihadists.
Mr Assad said: “Since the beginning of that (US-led) coalition, if you want to talk about facts, not opinion, since the beginning of that coalition, ISIS (Islamic State group) has expanded and the recruiting from around the world has increased.
“While since the participation of Russia in the same fight, so-called against terrorism, ISIS has been shrinking. And al-Nusra (Nusra Front) of course and the other terrorist groups. So this is reality. The facts are telling.”
Asked what it would take to end Syria’s four-year civil war, which has killed more than 200,000 people, Mr Assad said: “When those countries that I mentioned – France, UK, US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and some other – stop supporting those terrorists.
“(the next) day the situation will be better and in a few months we will have full peace in Syria, definitely. If they stop.”
The US, UK, and other Western powers fighting Islamic State have demanded that Mr Assad steps down and have backed rebel groups fighting his forces.
Meanwhile the Syrian president has referred to all his opponents as “terrorists” and accused world leaders pushing for his departure of “supporting terrorists”.
The Syrian leader is backed by Russia and Iran and he praised Vladimir Putin for launching a bombing campaign backing Assad’s forces in September.
In a wide-ranging interview with Czech TV, Mr Assad also said:
:: On The Migration Crisis:
“The feeling is very sad. Especially if you think about every person of those Syrians who left Syria has sad story behind him. It reflects the hardship of the Syrians during the crisis. From this (rational) way of looking at the situation, it’s a loss. Every one of those is a human resources that left Syria. So that will undermine. Undermine your society and your country. Definitely. But at the end we have to deal with the reasons.”
:: On Turkey Downing A Russian Jet:
“I think it has shown the real intention of Erodgan (Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan) who, let’s say, lost his nerve because the Russian intervention has changed the balance on the ground. So the failure of Erdogan in Syria, the failure of his terrorist groups means his political demise.”
:: On Relations With The West:
“If you look at the relation with the West, in 2005 I was the killer. In 2008 and after I was a peacemaker. Then in 2011 I became the vulture. Now, there’s some positive change – of course shy kind of change, not the explicit one.” ……..
I think the Russian air strikes have caught the US and, especially, Turkey, flat-footed. The shooting down of the Russian jet by Turkey seems to have been born out of a frustration at the targeting of the lucrative oil trade between Turkish middle-men and ISIS (and Erdogan’s son is said to be a key player here), but perhaps more importantly at the success of the Kurds.
